An Uncomfortable Conversation; Steve Sims

This is Steve Sims, and welcome to another episode of the Art of Making Things Happen: The Podcast. It’s a bit of a strange conversation to have at the moment. I use the word conversation by no accident because I’m concerned. I actually had a client that I was chatting with yesterday and they were talking to me about what’s going on in the office and everyone’s now getting back together and now everyone’s starting to get back into person-to-person communication. A subject apparently came up and he said, “Oh, yeah, I couldn’t really talk about it.” I said, “Well, why not?” He said, “Well, I was scared about how it would be taken out of context, soundbites and stuff like that said.” I said, “So what did you do?” He said, “Well, I didn’t discuss it. I didn’t talk about it.”

He said, “I feel a bit bad about it, but I don’t want to be judged.” He said so quite simply. I didn’t go anywhere with it and I just let the conversation die. Now, here’s the problem. In a world of AI, where we dictate and yell orders to Siri, to Alexa, to Amazon, we don’t communicate. We’re losing the art of communication and communication is not something you can download an app for. Now, over the past few years, it hasn’t been long, we’ve had Me Too, we’ve had Black Lives Matter, we’ve had Asian hate, we’ve had politics. We’ve had all these conversations. Do we have to have the people are actually avoiding having? You see, COVID’s come along and it’s actually distanced ourselves from people. We want to get together with people now.

People say, “Oh, Zoom, phone call, FaceTime.” Let’s be blunt. We want to shake hands. We want to hug it out. We want to kiss. We want to get connection again because as human beings, that’s what we are. But we’re now being terrified in our own generation to actually chat with each other, to have those conversations, to have that communication that may alienate, aggravate but also educate. I say today is not a day where we need to be avoiding having conversation, where we need to avoid looking stupid, looking ignorant. Today’s the day when we actually have to have those conversations. If something comes up that we don’t understand, we need to address it. Go “hang on a minute. Why is this a problem? What’s your perspective?” We need to bring the art of communication back. We’re at a dangerous precipice of losing that damn thing, and it’s the only thing that separates us.

It’s no good in having a good service or product if you don’t have the ability to be able to communicate what you do to somebody else. It’s no good sitting there and going, “Yeah, we’re a woke society if we’re piss scared to actually have that conversation that we need to be having.” Today’s the day that we need to address those situations, those issues and have an uncomfortable conversation if we have any hope whatsoever of educating ourselves and not repeating it.

I urge you, stop being scared of what people may think. But stick your hand out and go, “Hang a minute. I don’t fully understand that. Can someone explain that to me?” Get educated. Have conversations and stop being scared of what everyone else says. Because if we’re in a world of being scared, we’re going to have no progress. You think Elon Musk is scared of anything? Yes, but he will approach you and he will find out what the problem is. I’m urging you to do that.

If you want to be like Elon and use him as an example because I know a lot of entrepreneurs look up to him and so they should, address the situation that’s concerning you. Have those conversations to make you get uncomfortable. Get educated and lose the ignorance. It’s a short one, but hopefully that helps.

Sims Distillery

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